KSP: Heavenfall
by Tanthachon25
Summary: The war was not our fault. We didn't start it. We had nothing against Areus Inc. That didn't stop them burning our world to the ground
1. Chapter 1

"Grud?"

"Yeah?"

"We're picking something up here."

"…say whaat?"

"We're picking something up here."

"Yes I heard. Are you serious?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Of course I plukking am!"

"You mean to say we have actually managed to do something?"

"Yeah."

Sentinel Station had been up and running for nearing on one month, and this was the first thing they had ever encountered. Although it could and had in its first days been run by only one kerbal, it performed best with its capacity of four, commander, signals person, pilot and coffee grinder/auxiliary pilot. Despite being mainly an observation post, Sentinel Station did have a contingeant, or in non-technical words, pair of hummingbird class fighters in case of the station being attacked. Right now, Rudyid had a horrible feeling that time was fast approaching.

"What's the signal like?"

"Not entirely sure. It's not debris, because it's moving of its own accord. It's not a drone-controlled stage either." Rudyid rubbed his temples in annoyance. The bods on the ground had a habit of reactivating discarded stages and having some fun with them. That was how they ended up smearing the Esmat Munar probe across two biomes

"What about another ship? I don't believe Bill would wait this long before sending up another ship."

"No. We would've had contact by now."

"How close is it?"

"Twenty-three kliks and closing."

"Spin us around, I want to see what it is."

Rudyid nodded, and pressed a button on the signal console, causing a small purple reticule to flash onto the nav-ball in the seat next to him. Kicking out from his current location, Rudyid glided towards the Lander Can's primary command seat, grabbing the headrest and swinging himself into it. He took hold of the joystick and eased it right and up, feeling the station wobble as it slowly spun. Rudyid had never trusted the cons at Rockomax to make secure docking ports. It wasn't helped by the fact that when they docked the hab/magazine module, the SAS force had caused one of the fighters to fly off into space, with one of the astro-drones still attatched. He eased the station round, until the directional pipper was over the purple reticule.

"Can you see anything?"

"Not really. Mind getting my telescope?"

Rudyid sighed, getting out of the seat and flying over to the airlock. It was company policy for all astronauts to wear their spacesuits in their ships, in case of sudden need of disembarkation. This didn't stop the annoyingly cocky SSTO teams from going to minmus in their flight suits. The only thing that wasn't worn in the ship was the helmets and back units, which were stowed in a cupboard near the airlock. Rudyid reached in, shook the wotsits out of his helmet and slung on the back unit, fitting fresh monopropellant canisters into the pack and munching on one of the loose wotsits in the bottom of the locker, before sidling into the airlock.

As the outer door slid open, Rudyid smiled at the sight that met his eyes. From this high up, Kerbin was beautiful, the morning sun glinting off its curvature, the familiar sight of the Yenyen peninsula below them. The station had been set on a kerbisynchronous orbit, but due to an annoying fault of Grudgan's the station had been put on an inclination of -4 degrees NMO (Normal Munar Orbit). Rudyid was the one who had had to guide the Hab/magazine in to dock with the station.

Rudyid shook himself out of his thoughts, and began to climb, hand over hand, down the ladder to the Hab section. Or was it up? Or even sideways? He'd given up trying to determine which way was which days ago. He looked down as the ladder came to an end next to an array of Batt-man 9V battery packs. The Pegasus rungs ended here. He would have to spacewalk it.

Rudyid took in a deep breath, and pushed off from the ladder, gliding slowly away from the station. He reached behind him and grabbed the control rods for the EVA pack, pulling them forwards. He took hold of the joysticks and eased them down, catapulting him backwards along the length of the station. He narrowly avoided smashing off one of the solar panels on the rear of the ship, before making a grab for one of the rungs on the Hitchhiker module and pulling himself back onto the ship, climbing down/up/across to the airlock and sliding in.

"Hey guys, have you seen Grud's telescope?" Rudyid asked, swinging into the pod. The two kerbals there, Bunting and Capcik looked up from their game of pokeyfunsticks, Bunting accidently sending a flask of fresh coffee flying across the module.

"Under his pillow, as always." Capcik grinned, turning towards Rudyid before swearing as Bunting proceeded to poke down his block and send half his counters tumbling towards his opponent's magnetic skipjack formation poked into the corked board. Rudyid drifted over to Grudgan's sleepsack, and digging his arm in and pulling out the telescope, a long, piratey themed thing. Rudyid hastened towards the airlock, pausing only to grab the still spinning flask of coffee before pulling the inner door open.

This time, Rudyid did knock off one of the solar panels, hastily taping it back in place with emergency adhesive paper, also known as duct tape, insisting to himself that no one would notice. His mind drifted back to one of his earliest technical briefings. 'If you can't fix it, you're not using enough duct tape.' The rest of the clamber back to the Cupola module at the other end of the station was relatively uneventful, and Rudyid drifted out of the airlock smoothly.

"Here's the telescope." Rudyid tossed the implement across the cabin, and Grudgan caught it. "Oh, and by the way, the slight power dip we might end up with is not a system fault." Grudgan shook his head in amusement, before putting it to his eye.

"Yeah, I can see something white. It looks like a ship of some sort."

"Should we send out one of the drones to take a look?"

Grudgan sighed, scratching his hairline. "Mmmh, yeah, why not. If we lose it, we can ask for another when they ship up the next supply of coffee beans."

Rudyid nodded, and headed for the internal door. The drone control console was in the comms module just below the cupola, accessible by a direct hatch, although they didn't use it very much since a slight spin had resulted in a tiny crack that had sucked out half their snack supply, and Rudyid still made sure to put his helmet on before passing through.

Swinging back into the seat in the lander can, Rudyid booted up the Firespitter computer. The system was a very recent addition to the arsenal of CISP, introduced after a successful deal with B9 Aerospace Engineering. Rudyid had been lucky enough to get into the cockpit of a VX-2 Foxcat VTOL interceptor, which had been amazing fun and deceptively easy to fly. The screen flashed up an options menu, and Rudyid cycled to drone control, which flashed up the feed from a camera mounted in the nose of one of the station's astro drones, along with some of the station's external cameras. Rudyid pressed one of the buttons, and the drone undocked from the station with a clank and a hiss, the drone drifting away slowly. Rudyid flicked up a menu, leaning over to the comms unit and feeding the system's data on the signal source into the drone control unit. A small purple symbol flashed up on the camera view, along with a white reticule in the centre of the screen. Rudyid took hold of one joystick and eased the white reticule over the purple one, before pushing the other joystick forwards and sending the drone rocketing away from the station on RCS thrust alone.

Rudyid activated the SAS, keeping the drone on course with the mysterious target. He wasn't expecting an actual encounter; a flyby would be all that was required. The distance was closing, and Rudyid peered at the little symbol tagged 'Unknown' as the numbers flew down. It was white, Grudgan had got that right, but otherwise, nothing. It was pretty big, because it was visible from five hundred metres on the screen. Rudyid eased the second joystick back, cutting his speed a little, and activating the recording software. The plugin would record all visual and spatial data of the little probe, giving them a clear account of what they were looking at.

As the probe got within 40 metres of the thing and began to shoot off into empty space, Rudyid stared, slack-jawed at the image on the screen. Panic filled him.

"Grud! Contact identified!"

"And?"

"It's a froddamned battleship!"

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"Nope. Sending you the feed."

There was silence over the PA.

"Jeez, you're right."

"What do we do?"

"Mobilize the fighters. Bunt, Cap?"

"Yay, stuff to blow up!"

"I'm counting on you. Do it."

Rudyid watched from the small viewscreen in the lander can as the two fighters broke away from the stations waist, a long stack of torpedoes docked to the nose of each, the hummingbirds turning, extending their huge solar wings and thrusting away into the blackness, ion engines glowing.

"Grud, what are we supposed to do now?"

"Send a message to CISC; we are under attack by unknown assailants. Also, hail any ships in the vicinity. We might just get out of this with our towels."

"Got it." Rudyid switched over to the comms unit, finding the local distress frequency and slipping on the headphones. "All craft, this is Cataphractii Industries Sentinel Station alt. 2.34K kilometres, hailing all nearby ships, we are under attack by unknown battlecruiser, over." Rudyid set the message on loop, before composing a direct transmission to CISC. "This is Cataphractii Industries Sentinel Station under attack by unknown assailant, deploying defensive protocols, over."

Rudyid shifted over to the viewscreen, watching the fighters drift away from the station, removing the headphones. He watched as the cruiser drew closer, its shape more recognisable. It bore no resemblance to any ships ever rolled off Cataphractii Industries' production lines, nor even like the secret prototype Charon Battle Carrier. The closest thing it resembled was one of the old outdated Spiritwolf Scourge Class Light Carrier, but much larger and modified beyond compare. The hull was studded in armour plating, torpedoes, solar panels and other miscellaneous bits, and Rudyid thought he spied gun turrets on the ship's dorsal column. He gulped.

Suddenly, the headphones crackled. Rudyid made a grab for them.

"-ation, come in, this is Draconius Attack Shuttle Wyvernflame with a full cache of torpedoes ready to assist, what is your position, over." Rudyid checked the control console of the Lander Can.

"Draconius Wyvernflame, we read you. Our exact position is 43.21.67, 82.71.28, at a height of 2634 Kilometres and at a speed of 1345m/s. We are currently engaging the target but require desparate assistance, what is your ETA?"

"ETA approximately eighteen minutes and counting." Rudyid groaned.

"Sorry, Wyvernflame, but that's too long, you'll be backing up a graveyard by then."

"That's the fastest we can get there. We're already taking a massive risk by burning straight towards you, if we muck it up we're gonna be out by Minmus in a heartbeat. Try to hold that thing off."

Rudyid sighed, hurling the headphones away. "Grud, nearest ship is 18 minutes out." He heard the station commander swear.

"If the worst comes to the worst, we'll fire our magazine, try and take out something important." He heard Grudgan sigh. "I really hope it doesn't come to that. "

Rudyid watched the glowing rings that were all he could see of the two fighters. The carrier was closing in. There was a bright flash from one of the fighters; two torpedoes had been fired and were streaking towards the target. Rudyid patched in one of the fighter's cams on the signals console, watching the torpedoes smash against the ship's hull, an orange bloom lighting the carrier and reflecting off the fighter's solar panels as the monopropellant in the torpedo ignited. Rudyid waited for it to die down, and groaned. The armour of the carrier was intact, a few loose fragments and dislodged solar panels drifting away from it. He saw the other fighter, Capcik's ship, swing round underneath the ship, trying to find a weak spot. Rudyid knew that the Shade class carrier possessed a hangar slung under the main body, but he wasn't sure if this one had. Suddenly, there was a flash of light from the carrier, as something streaked towards the fighter. Zooming in, he saw the distinctive bulbous shape of a Canine-pattern anti-fighter torpedo, thruster ports flaring. He saw Capcik spin the fighter in an attempt to dodge, and watched it slam into the fighter's port side, smashing its rear to pieces and sending the ship spiralling away in a cloud of debris and leaking Xenon. Bunting's fighter moved in, sliding under the ship. With only one torpedo left it wasn't going to do much damage, but the Kerbal was going for a suicide run. The last torpedo hissed away from the nose of the fighter, and this time Bunting got lucky. It hit a chink in the armour near the side and sent a sizeable part of the ship spinning away, exposing the ship's innards.

Suddenly, the camera went dead. Rudyid panicked, fiddling on the console to try and get it back. He glanced out the viewscreen. The place where the fighter had been was now occupied with a bloom of flame, pieces of fighter flying in all directions. Rudyid stared in horror, watching as one of the carrier's dorsal turret sprayed a stream of bullets into one of the larger pieces, shredding it.

"Grud, that thing just made mincemeat of Cap and Bunt."

"Peasius. We're in trouble."

"What do we do?"

"We fire the mag. We might just do some damage."

"And if not? You saw what that gun did to Bunting!"

"…I don't know. I guess we'll just wing it."

The carrier drifted closer, engines glowing. A small beep issued from the signals console. Rudyid spun over to it.

"They're broadcasting us a message."

"Play it back."

Rudyid clicked the play button. The booming, twangy Young Kolus accent reverberated across the station.

"Inhabitants of Cataphractii Intustries Sentinel Station, this is Areus Incorporated attack carrier _Bane of Cheddar_. We demand your immediate surrender. Faliure to comply will result in the use of deadly force. You have nowhere to run."

Rudyid could feel the station judder and knew that Grudgan had resorted to firing the magazine, but the carrier beat him to it. The minigun in the dorsal turret scythed across the lower half of the station, cutting away the magazine module and most of the vital systems, and Rudyid was thrown across the wall as the station began to spin wildly. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the carrier nosing up to the station, and the familiar clunk of a docking port. They were in the shit now.

_The attack on Sentinel Station was one of two atrocities that sparked the ensuing war, the second being the cluster bombing of Cataphractii Industries' Mining Base Amadeus. Some said retrospectively that Areus Inc. were after Cataphractii's extensive web of monopropellant mining/producing sites, other say they were just jealous. Either way, there is no doubt that the war that followed would be long and terrible._

_As for Sentinel Station, the shell was destroyed by the carrier_ Bane of Cheddar_, and the two remaining Kerbals on board were captured. It is most likely that Bunting Kerman was killed in action, while Capcik is still missing. Many say he is still out in orbit, floating in the wreckage of his Hummingbird._


	2. Chapter 2

Bill strode through the corridors of CISC, various officials and heads of departments striding alongside, struggling to give the centre commander their reports.

"Contact was lost with Sentinel Station at 14:00 HMT, Areus Inc. has refused to make a statement."

"We have lost half our refining facilities at Amadeus Base after an unknown aircraft dropped some kind of airburst ordinance, five casualties and thirteen injured."

"Recon Mission 3 has recovered re-entry capsule of the Atlantis Rescue Drone, Killian Kerman is aboard and accounted for."

"OSF – 4 Harpy 'Woodchucker' has passed test flights and is ready to be deployed."

"Elysium Mobile Laboratory has finished refining the Pegasus missile design and sent the blueprints over this morning. We already have a score in production."

"Sensors detecting increased radar activity around the Podzolic Archipeligo, we think someone has managed to reactivate the Insular Airfield's facilities."

Bill's brain was going haywire. They had lost a station and a base in less than three hours, and at least seven dead if not more.

"Tell the SPH to fire up a Vonnegut for a high-fly recon mission, if they've finally got round to fixing those damned SABRE engines." Bill didn't break his step. "On top of that, we're going to need a Strugatsky at Amadeus ASAP, medical supplies, repairable stuff, the whole bit. I want a full outfitting of the Harpy prototypes for combat and a Draconius en-route to Sentinel's last known location. If Grudgan's alive, we must bring him back."

"Draconius Shuttle Wyvernflame is already on an intercept course, having received a distress call from Sentinel, sir."

"Good." Bill breathed a slight sigh of relief. "Any clues on what happened to the station?"

"The message was garbled, but it seems the station was attacked by some unknown ship."

Bill's momentary relief vanished in a heartbeat.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" One of his assistance was nervously holding a clipboard and trying to keep up with him.

"The press require a statement about what happened today. Fortunately, they don't know about the disappearance of an entire space station, but they want to know what happened at Amadeus."

"Fine." Bill sighed. He hated the media. Blood sucking parasites, the whole lot of them. "Tell them an experiment went wrong or something. We can't pass it off as a training accident in a mining base." Bill turned round to face the Kerbal. "And make sure no one at Amadeus says anything until we can get a debrief out of them. A national panic attack is the last thing we need."

"Okay, scientific accident." The assistant scurried away. Bill leant against the nearest wall, pressing his mobile to his ear.

"Eeyup?"

"Jeb?"

"Bill! My old biscuitfripper, wazzaap in the life and stuff? How's the science going?"

Bill sighed. "Not good. We lost contact with one of our stations early this morning, and on top of that Amadeus base got cluster bombed a few hours later."

"Jeez, really?"

"Yeah. I'm afraid we need you back."

"Sorry, no dice. I'm not getting back in a plane again."

"Come on, what happened to the badass tag? What happened to buzzing the tower with heavy lifter rockets? What happened to the boosterphile I knew and counted as a friend?"

"He died in a car fire."

"Jeb…"

"I will."

"Jeb, please, we need you back on…wait, what?"

"I'll come back. On two conditions though."

"Anything."

"One: Get the fuck rid of the mechjeb modules in the SPH. I couldn't give a damn about what you use for your rockets, but I don't trust a mechanical copy of my brain."

Bill thought about it for a second. "Okay. And secondly?"

"I want access to the R&D facility. I have some nifty little ideas…"

Donfrid liked the Vonnegut. It was fast, manoeuvrable and devastatingly beautiful. Although the plane's cockpit had not yet been fully done up; the prototype hypersonic design still raw, the control systems cut/pasted from the Mk I cockpit, the ship's feel was amazing. It was capable of space-hopping and even, with the right piloting, even making orbit.

The craft he was flying had been modified for surveillance purposes, with a high zoom HD camera and four of the brand-new Pegasus missiles for defensive purposes. Not that Donfrid had any idea how to use them.

The Vonnegut, affectionately christened 'pieflinger' was currently halfway over the vodnyish sea and cruising 10000 metres up. Donfrid admitted, he was pushing the thing. The air capacity figures on the left hand side of the console were less than 20%, but the dual sabre engines were still going strong. he would need only a touch more thrust to kick him into orbit. He was hoping that if someone had reactivated the insular airfield, there wouldn't as of yet be any defences.

He could see the cluster of islands that made up the Podzolic Archipeligo on the camera's feed. CISP had given up on the islands as a base location as the only non-mountainous area was the old Insular Airfield, the site of a previous attempt to privatise space, in the days where even Spiritwolf was little more than a chick. The airfield was on a small flat part of the largest island, a treacherous location, the raised runway sandwiched in the middle of a valley creating lethal canyons on either side of the runway. Donfrid was reminded of the incident with Anemone Kerman a few years back, on a survey mission to the Airfield. His Ravenspear had overshot , skidded off the runway and had shredded itself in one of these trenches, killing the pilot. The rescue mission had gathered a lot of fame not for the putting to rest of Anemone, but for the rescue of the first rescue mission, the VX-1 Vance having landed badly among some of the old ruins.

Donfrid dipped the control column, lowering the Vonnegut's nose to try and get closer to the airfield. He enhanced the camera view.

"Oven, this is pieflinger, have visual on objective, over."

"Copy that pieflinger, what do you see?"

Donfrid stared at the image. "I see several new buildings. There's another hangar, and some kind of complex to the south….I think there's something on the runway. I'm bringing her in closer."

"Copy that pieflinger, be careful."

Donfrid brought the plane round into a spiral, watching the altimeter click downwards. He could definitely see something white on the runway, broad and long, cross shaped. He brought the craft lower, now at about 5000 metres. The camera vision was obscured for a moment as the Vonnegut circled around the island's mountain. He had a sudden idea.

"Oven, this is pieflinger, coming in for a low supersonic pass."

"Negative pieflinger, you'd be right in the dangerzone."

Donfrid grinned. "Understood oven, proceeding with pass. I was fucking born in the dangerzone."

As the Vonnegut circled round, Donfrid flicked a switch, and with a roar, the plane's SABRE engines flipped instantly to rocket mode. Out of the cockpit window, he could see the cone-shaped intakes sliding shut, now redundant. He banked round, pressed into his seat by the phenomenal thrust of the rocket engines. The cockpit's speedometer was rising rapidly, past mach 1. Donfrid straightened the plane out, flying supersonic at just 500 metres above the sea, lines of compressed air forming around the nose of the plane. On instinct, he flicked one of the switches, and the cockpit sank into the plane's nose, increasing the craft's aerodynamic shape. Within two seconds, he had passed over the airfield, camera taking snaps like there was no tomorrow. The Vonnegut's sonic boom was placed right over the complex, causing one kerbal who had gone outside for a smoke to practically choke on it. Donfrid banked away, switching back to jet engines and doing a few celebratory barrel rolls to throw off any missiles. He doubted they had. They would've had to know he was coming.

Suddenly, the Vonnegut shuddered violently, rolling over and rocking up and down. Donfrid swore, flicking the switch to raise the cockpit out of the fuselage and swivelled in his seat, glancing back at the plane. It was not good. While the airbase wouldn't have had missile defence, some kind of anti-air gun had opened up on the plane, blasting off one of the butterfly canards and shredding half of the plane's control surfaces. The plane was already losing height, but it had done its job. Donfrid throttled up, bringing the craft round, eyes fixed on the dropping needle of the altimeter. He had enough fuel and height to get within spitting distance of CISC, and was just hoping he'd have enough control to ditch successfully.

"This is worrying."

Bill knew even as he said it that the words were an understatement. Pieflinger had transmitted the results of its observation just before ditching, and the photo Bill and Joegee were poring over was taken directly over the runway.

"It looks like a Strugatsky from here."

Bill shook his head. "No, it's too short. Also, see the black section on the top?"

"Thermal tiles…" Joegee murmured.

Bill nodded. "Part of the Strugatsky design fuselage, but upside down."

"Why would they turn half the fuselage upside down?"

Bill paused, something clicking in his head. "Have you heard of Project Skippyjack?"

Joegee turned, a quizzical look on his face. "I heard tell of it. Wasn't it something the SPH were planning?"

"Planned and carried out." Bill turned, rummaging around in one of the filing cabinets in the small room. He drew out a file, and opened it, displaying a section of blueprints, formulae sheets, photographs and a doodled picture of a mouse with wings.

"The aim was to create a low-altitude dispersal payload. It was military at first, using small SRBs as bomblets and a lot of decouplers to eject them." Bill held up a photo, showing a large conical device on a construction cradle, clusters of cylindrical objects attatched to a central column. "We even built a dedicated carrier plane. The D-121 Svalbard." Another photo, this time of a short, six-engined plane, a large dorsal area covered in thermal tiles.

"What happened to the project?" Joegee asked.

"It lost funding, mostly. It was also helped by an incident where one of the prototypes clipped the ground while attempting to buzz the tower. The crew survived, but the bomb went off and blew out all the windows of the SPH. Oh, and also because one of the engineers decided the Svalberd would be better with dropping crew pods."

Bill sighed. "A few months ago someone ran off with one of the prototype Svalbard bombers." He saw the look on Joegee's face and added. "Don't ask me how someone broke into the SPH and stole a Froddamned plane, we just wrote it off. Those things were pretty hard to fly. Everyone severely underestimated its manoeuvrability."

Joegee nodded. "And this is where it ended up."

"Yup. Only there's another thing."

"What?"

Bill drew out another photo. It showed the Svalbard in question on the runway, and a cart sitting next to it. Strapped down onto the cart was a white bullet-shaped object, about 1 and a quarter metres across. A large capital alpha symbol was painted onto the plane's wing.

"It's Areus. They've nicked our tech and have refined it."

"Areus Inc?"

"Yep. And I'll bet my underpants that they were behind the attack on Amadeus Base."

"What about the loss of Sentinel?"

"Maybe. They did mention being under attack."

They stood there in silence for a few moments.

"So what now?" asked Joegee, turning to Bill. The kerbal stood there, contemplating.

"We steal it back." Said Bill decisively. "We rig up one of the Svalberds with a few rovers. You'll parachute in, infiltrate the base and run off with it."

"Wait, back up." Joegee put his hands up. "You want _me_ to nick it?"

Bill nodded. "Yeah, of course. You're one of the best pilots we have. You got Thunderous IV off the moon and back in one…well, technically two pieces. If anyone's got the skill to handle a Svalberd, it's you."


End file.
